It's too late and our politically motivated leadership is only making the issue worse.
Everything the USA is suppressing, China is promoting. For example, education and renewable energy.
The USA is investing heavily in AI but divesting in the cheap energy it needs to become viable.
Strategy wise, it makes no sense --- mostly due to political influence from vested interests.
60% of new electricity capacity added to US grids (over 30 GW) this year will be solar.
China currently has twice the solar capacity of the US and adding capacity at 3-4x our rate.
If they try to rely on protectionism and tarrifs, it will fail. Consumers will demand access to superior products.
No, western executives aren't shaken by visiting China. Most major car manufacturers build cars in China, the Chinese learned how to build cars from them. The Chinese did not discover some magic way to build cars better than everyone else.
What China does is relentlessly improve. It absolutely has the goal to be totally dominant in all areas of manufacturing. They do this by delivering the highest value product they can. Optimizing production and focusing on their customers.
In the US mechanical and manufacturing engineers are a small niche. Compared to Software they are badly paid, get less benefits (e.g. remote work) and have few promising or ground breaking companies to work for. That is what should be terrifying to everyone. America has no engineering culture and has no manufacturing culture. Pretending otherwise is just deluding oneself.
Here in Germany that manufacturing culture is dying. There are still new engineers, but companies, especially automotive, have stopped hiring and are cutting jobs.
China is in it to win. The west has not even decided that they want to compete. The US is focusing on Software above everything else. Germany is abandoning manufacturing for an uncertain alternative.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
The US manufacturing sector employs 10x more people than the US information sector.
Almost every single thing you own was manufactured in China. Almost nothing you own is manufactured in America. The US car industry only exists because the US has banned the Chinese competition.
China has 10x the employees in manufacturing. If you remove the areas where Chinese competition is banned, cars and defense, the lead will be even more enormous. Actually look at what part of the US economy is manufacturing. The US is not manufacturing "even though" 1/30 the of the population works in manufacturing.
Also compare the jobs. In Software basically every job is a high paying middle class existence. In manufacturing basically every job is lower class. Studying mechanical engineering in the US is choosing to be a looser.
